Personality Judgment. Personality Judgments. Consequences of Everyday Judgments. PSYC Lecture 5 Dr. J. Nicol

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1 Personality Judgment PSYC Lecture 5 Dr. J. Nicol Personality Judgments Personality judgments are made quickly and almost automabcally without thinking (Hassin & Troupe, 2000) Personality judgments we make about other people are important because a persons reputabon affects their opportunibes and expectancies Personality judgments therefore need to be accurate Consequences of Everyday Judgments ReputaBon largely affects the opportunibes that you are granted and how people behave around you, and in turn how you act Shy people are typically misjudged as cold and aloof Shy and non-shy people are treated differently (DePaulo et al., 1989) NegaBve social feedback makes the person more shy in the future (Cheek, 1990)

2 Consequences of Everyday Judgments Judgments about our personality produce behaviours that confirm those beliefs, so expectancy effects are also involved in personality judgements School children randomly labelled bloomers had higher IQ at the end of the year compared to those not given the label (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968) Males caused females to respond in a warmer and more friendly manner if they were led to believe she was a_racbve (Snyder et al., 1977) To some extent we become what other people perceive, or misperceive us to be! Madon et al. (2006) Accuracy of Personality Judgments The accuracy of a personality judgment can be assessed the same way it is assessed for personality assessments, through convergent validabon (i.e., assembling diverse pieces of informabon that converge on a common conclusion) For personality judgments two primary converging criteria are: Inter-judge agreement PredicBve validity

3 Todorov et al. (2005) Face-Based Personality Judgments 3/4 undergraduates believe that personality can be judged from configural properbes of the face (Hassin & Troupe, 2000) Aher 15 minutes of siing in silence, judgments of personality correlate at r = 0.30 with three of the Big Five personality traits: extraversion, conscienbousness, and openness to experience (Passini & Norman, 1966) Personality judgments about a stranger made aher siing in silence together for 15 minutes are about twice likely to be right as wrong based on Passini & Norman (1966)

4 Rule & Ambady (2008a) Hassan & Trope (2000) On average, people could tell the difference between composites of high- and low-scoring male faces on agreeableness, extraversion, and emobonal stability Penton-Voak et al. (2006)

5 On average, people could tell the difference between composites of high- and low-scoring female faces on agreeableness and extraversion Penton-Voak et al. (2006) Renmrow & Gosling (2006) Renmrow & Gosling (2006)

6 Fans of classical and religious music are judged as agreeable, conscienbous, and emobonally stable, while fans of rock and rap music are not Renmrow & Gosling (2007) Fans of rock and rap music are judged as low on conservabveness and religiousness, and fans of classical music are judged as low on physical a_racbveness and athlebcism Renmrow & Gosling (2007) Fans of rock and rap music are judged as liking beer and drugs in general, while fans of classical music are judged as liking wine and cocktails, but not drugs Renmrow & Gosling (2007)

7 Good Judges of Personality Good judges tend to more intelligent and conscienbous (Tah, 1955) Gender difference: results are mixed but generally in favour of females (Ambady et al., 1995) Accurate male judges are outgoing and confident, whereas accurate female judges are open to and interested in, other people (Kolar, 1996) Generally good judges are posibve people (Letzring & Funder, 2006) Good Judges of Personality People who describe themselves as good judges are no be_er than those who rate themselves as poorer in the ability to judge personality (Biesanz et al., 2011) But people are able to accurately disbnguish between people that they can and cannot judge accurately (Biesanz et al., 2011) We are fairly good at knowing what other people think of us (Carlson et al., 2011) Good Targets for Personality Judgments Accurate personality judgments depend more on who is being judged, than on who does the judging (Human & Biesanz, 2013) The most judgeable people behave consistently (i.e., their future behaviour can be predicted from past behaviour) The stable, well-organized personality of consistent people tends to make them the most psychologically well-adjusted people (Colvin, 1993) Best targets also tend to extraverted and agreeable (Ambady et al., 1995)

8 Good Traits for Personality Judgments Observable traits are easier to judge accurately than those related to mental states or feelings (Funder & Dobroth, 1987; Russell & Zickar, 2005) Judges are more accurate at detecbng a trait called socio-sexuality than other non-reproducbon-related traits (Gangestad et al., 1992) Gangestad et al. (1992) Good InformaBon for Judging Personality Accurate judgment of personality depends on both the quanbty and the quality of the informabon More informabon is generally be_er, but just as important for the informabon to be relevant to the traits being judged Some traits can be judged accurately in seconds others require more Bme (Carney et al., 2007) Acquaintanceship effect: for most traits, having more informabon leads to more accurate judgments (Funder & Colvin, 1988) Boundary on the acquaintanceship effect: judgments of strangers and close acquaintances are about the same for novel behaviours (Colvin & Funder, 1991)

9 Good InformaBon for Judging Personality A cribcal factor appears to depend on the situabon and the kind of informabon that it reveals about the person: viewing in a more stressful situabon compared to a relaxed situabon led to more accurate personality judgments (Hirshmuller et al., 2014) More informabve to observe someone behave in a weak than a strong situabon (Snyder & Ickes, 1985) SituaBons that elicit the behaviour or trait being judged are the best for judging personality (Freeberg, 1969)